Unexplored human history in the Indian Ocean: Human biological adaptations to the Indian Ocean slave trade and Indonesian dispersal to Madagascar – OCEOADAPTO

This project aims to investigate the human biological impact of two neglected dispersal events during the last 2 millennia in the Indian Ocean: the Indian Ocean slave trade (eastward) and the Indonesian settlement of Madagascar (westward). By generating new genome-wide data we will characterize genetic and epigenetic human variation in order to detect demographic/migratory population histories and selective pressures that affect human variation in a changing environment (diseases/pathogens, climate) and over a short time-period. Results will be interpreted using non-genetic evidence (historical, linguistic, archaeological data). This inter-disciplinary project using a new range of tools (genomic associated to epigenomic) should lead to significant results in the field of human environmental adaptation and genetic anthropology.